Dean Koontz

[Camy]

Dean Koontz's 'Darkness Under The Sun' is presently available for free at Amazon - as a kindle ebook. Not that I'm egging anyone on to get a kindle (or their readers for almost every damn device out there).

I like Dean Koontz, and his books are generally a good read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkness-Under-the...;s=digital-text

Camy

[E.J.]

can it be read without a kindle, or is it a proprietary format.

[Camy]

Though the format is proprietary, you don't need a kindle as you can use their readers. avaiable for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android. Also, using Calibre they can be changed to ePub or others (I believe).

Kindle Apps

[Bruin Fisher]

I have four Kindle e-books, but no Kindle device. I use the 'Kindle for PC' software which is a Windows application but it runs fine under Ubuntu Linux within the WINE environment.

I just checked if I can change the format using Calibre, and although Calibre can convert Kindle e-books to epub format, in the case of my books, it reported that since they are DRM protected, the protection will have to be removed using other software first. I don't know how to do that, and I imagine most Kindle books are probably similarly protected.

Calibre is great software for managing a library of e-books. I generally buy e-books in .pdf format but it's not ideal (the documents have fixed length pages so you have to scroll past top and bottom margins every page) and I would like to standardise on a flexible open format.

[The Pecman]

I've tried to read Dean Koontz, I really have, but i just hated everything of his that I've read -- Lightning, Watchers, and a couple of others. They just sucked. It's like a cheap knock-off, watered-down version of Stephen King, with about 1/10th of the originality. Awful.

J.K. Rowling I like; King I like. I like a lot of Anne Rice's stuff, too (until she started writing Jesus books). But Koontz just leaves me cold.

Note that Darkness Under the Sun is not free as a Kindle book in America -- it's $1.49, which is about ten bucks off list price (not bad). To be fair to Mr. Koontz, I also really disliked King's new novella collection, Full Dark, No Stars, which I found so depressing as to be unreadable. Rough book.

[Camy]

Koontz I like because he's an easier read than King. Koontz I'd liken to traipsing through a mud bath; King to struggling through an overgrown swamp.

Lord of the Rings is a bit swampish as well. Way too much Dwarven poetry which, three times, has stopped me dead in my tracks as I near the end of Fellowship of the Ring. Never having read Return of the King I just nod mutely when asked 'is it good?' The film trilogy is brilliant ... though how 'The Hobbit' can be stretched to two films amazes me.

I didn't realise that the US version of the Kindle site had different pricing.

[The Pecman]

I agree, some of the King works are very daunting. The Dark Tower in particular is rough -- something like over 3,000,000 words for all seven books. But I think there's ultimately a reward in there... somewhere.